Monuments represent America
By Will Wingfield
Managing Editor

The ground shakes. A marvel of modern ingenuity falls to the ground, its greatness never again to be seen by human eyes.

This landmark, which in its heyday drew people from miles around, once stood as a testament to the capabilities of humankind, and was a distinguishing point along its city’s skyline. In fact, this event did not occur last month, but in 226 B.C. In that year, an earthquake struck the Mediterranean islands of Greece, destroying the Colossus of Rhodes.

Seated at the entrance of Rhodes’ main harbor, the Colossus was a 100-foot-high bronze statue in the image of their sun god, Helios. Some historical accounts in fact suggest that the Colossus appeared as a robed lady, clutching a book and lifting a lit torch to the sky. It was with this image in mind that French sculptor Auguste Bartholdi modeled the Statue of Liberty, our nation’s enduring symbol of freedom and equality.
Classified as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the statue stood for over 50 years before weakening at the knees and collapsing. Of those seven wonders, only the Great Pyramids of Egypt remain today. The rest were destroyed by war, earthquakes or general decay, and can be recounted only through historical descriptions.
On Sept. 11, another feat of human engineering came toppling to the ground. Like the legs of the great Colossus, the 110-story twin towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed by an undeclared, premeditated act of war, and thus shared the fate of many ancient wonders. What were once the tallest buildings in the world were reduced to a smoldering pile of rubble in less than two hours when these giant “legs” in the sky weakened at the knees and, too, collapsed.

Unlike the destruction of other great monuments, however, millions watched the buildings fall live from home, work or school. Never before has an act of war been witnessed by so many. I wonder what it would have been like to see the bombing of Pearl Harbor, or the sinking of the Lusitania or the USS Maine.

Last March, another set of monuments were also destroyed. Two 175-foot Buddha statues stood for 1,500 years, carved, much like our country’s Mount Rushmore, into the side of a mountain in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Valley. It was only after the Taliban’s unrelenting assault of dynamite and mortar fire that the world’s tallest standing Buddhas were chipped away, and lost forever.

In the wake of the attacks we, as Americans, learned the sad fact that our creations, like ourselves, are mortal. As long as hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and the heartless intentions of evil men exist in this world, no one, and no thing, is truly safe.
Our buildings and memorials are a source of pride for our nation, like many of the great wonders of Egypt and Greece. The Lincoln memorial, the Capitol, Monticello, the White House and others appear on our nation’s currency, much like the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, another ancient wonder, did in ancient Greece.

I wonder whether these monuments and buildings, these sources of American pride, will too remain for future generations, or will be destroyed by acts of God, or acts of war. We must strive to ensure that history does not repeat itself.